Small purple flowers atop tall leafless stems from July to October. Great see-through blooms for growing in back, middle or front of the garden.
Size: 3-4’ x 8” Care: full sun in moist, well-drained, fertile soil - self-seeder Native: South America Awards: Royal Horticultural Society Award of Merit & Missouri Botanic Garden Plant of Merit.
Introduced to garden cultivation from its native Buenos Aires in 1726 by the Sherard brothers.
Thymus serpyllum syn. Thymus praecox Mother-of-thyme, creeping thyme Z 4-9
Size: 3” x 24” Care: sun in well-drained soil Native: Europe & Western Asia Size: groundcover, rock garden, herb, fragrant foliage, thyme lawn
Thymus from the Greek word for “odor” due to the plant’s fragrance. Ancient Greeks made incense with thyme. This species since at least 1753. Acc’d to Parkinson in 1640 this remedied hysterics in women. Wm. Robinson wrote,”nothing can be more charming than a sunny bank covered with” Thymus serpyllum. LH Bailey extolled it as “prized as an evergreen edging and as cover for rockwork and waste places …The leaves are sometimes used for seasoning.”
Buxus microphylla var. koreana syn. B. sinensis var. insularis
Size: 24” x 30” Care: Light to Part shade in well drained, alkaline soil. Do not crowd with other plants, roots prefer no competition. Fertilize regularly for dramatic growth. Prune in early spring. Unlike English boxwood this can be pruned back hard. One of a few shade tolerant evergreens and deer resistant too. Also the most hardy Boxwood.
Introduced from Asia to American and European gardens around 1900 by Ernest Henry “Chinese” Wilson (1876-1930) who scoured Asia for plants.
Clematis texensis ‘Gravetye Beauty’ Z 5-9
Small crimson-red bells dangle from July to September
Small crimson-red bells dangle from July to September
Size: 8’ x 3’ Care: Sun in humusy, fertile, moist well-drained soil. Mulch around the base. Flowers on current year’s stems so cut back to 6-9” in late winter or early spring.
The genus Clematis was named by Dioscordes, physician in Nero’s army, from “klema” meaning climbing plant. The species 1st collected by the “Father of Texas botany,” Ferdinand Lindheimer in 1830’s. Max Leichtin of the Baden Garden sent Clematis texensis to Kew Botanic Garden near London in 1880’s. French nurseryman Francisque Morel sent this selection to William Robinson who named it for his English nursery at Gravetye Manor in 1914.